[TriLUG] Availability of bzip2 in 20 years?

[Tanner Lovelace]

On 11/25/06, Jason Tower <jason at cerient.net> wrote:
> bzip is much slower than gzip, a lot less widespread, and doesn't yield
> substantially better compression ratios on the vast majority of data.  so
> why bother?

While bzip2 is much slower than gzip, my experience with it has been that
compression ratios are generally better than gzip.  Now, that's using the
default options on both gzip and bzip2, so I don't know if perhaps you
could give gzip some option to compress more.

As far as if it will be available in 20 years, I'd probably say yes, at least
on Linux.  Linux has started compressing their kernels using bzip2 instead
of gzip now, so it's probably a sure bet it will be available there.  I'll defer
the question as to whether Linux will be around in 20 years.

Of course, if you're paranoid about it, you could do this:

1. Add the sources to bzip2 on the dvd
2. Add a statically linked version of bzip2 to the dvd.

That way you're probably covered.

Cheers,
Tanner
-- 
Tanner Lovelace
clubjuggler at gmail dot com
http://wtl.wayfarer.org/
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